Associations, The Value of Membership, and Social Media

All of us in the Association community are trying to figure out ways to deliver on the member value proposition. With economic challenges, increased competition from other groups, we must use our collective brainpower to figure out new and innovative ways to do this.

Being that I live in the online world and have been working for associations for the past 20 years, I am constantly trying to come up with new ways to package and deliver content, education, and community in ways that are relevant and valuable.

As associations our mission and purpose is all about leveraging the power of community towards a series of end results. Similarly, the ‘new’ online world and social media are all about the same thing. This is very good news for all of us indeed.

Our opportunity is to figure out how best to use concepts around social networking, online communities, content tagging, blogging, and other relevant online approaches to make the best experience possible for our members – nurturing our relationships with them – ultimately resulting in a strengthened allegiance and long-term loyalty.

This could be fun, or scary – depending on how you look at it.

Whether you are creating causes on Facebook, geotagging event attendees, providing topic/issue-based rss feeds, creating and sharing Flickr Photos, or delivering online learning esxperiences – keep pushing the envelope.

When it comes to delivering value to our members, I believe that (virtually) anything is possible.

How are you using the online world to deliver value to your members?

Let me know and I would be happy to write about it here…